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tongue will fall off if he eats it with the peanut butter on the wrong side.
    Jil makes a zip-it motion across her lips and glares at me.
    â€œEat your lunch,” I tell Denver. Then I reach across and flip his sandwich over. “See?” I say. “I fixed it.”
    He picks up the sandwich and looks underneath. Then he takes a tiny bite. What Mom doesn’t know is that I can make Denver do things he doesn’t want to without all her tricks. I have my own tricks. But my best one is not putting up with his weirdness.
    I pour apple juice into a bright green sippy cup and set it down beside his plate. “Let’s go in the den.” I motion Jil to follow.
    â€œYou can’t leaf me,” Denver complains.
    â€œI’m not leaving you. I’m just going in the other room. So you can prove to me what a big boy you are.”
    Then, for his dining entertainment, I pop a Disney song disc into his blue plastic player.
    â€œâ€™Kay,” he answers happily, taking a bigger bite of his sandwich.
    â€œShe called my house,” says Jil as soon as we get out of earshot of bigmouth boy. Denver has a bad habit of repeating things he’s not supposed to know.
    â€œ Who called your house?”
    â€œMy real mother.”
    â€œYou mean, your birth mother.”
    â€œSame thing.”
    I gape at Jil. I’m not so sure it is the same thing.
    Jil sits down on our sofa and looks up at me. Expectantly. Excitedly.
    I slump onto the seat of Dad’s recliner, careful to keep it upright. Crinkly bulges greet my butt. I lean forward slightly and sweep the lumpy pile of magazines and weeks-old newspapers to the floor.
    â€œI heard them talking on the phone,” says Jil. “Mom and my real mom. Only I didn’t know it was her until later.”
    Jil is sitting on the edge of our couch, leaning forward and moving her hands as if she’s telling a ghost story.
    â€œI heard Mom saying stuff like ‘But we agreed. No contact until Jil is older,’ and ‘I’ll send more pictures. Please. Don’t call here again.’ When she hung up, I asked her who it was, and she said, ‘Wrong number,’ with her face all red and splotchy-looking. Then she flew straight up the stairs to where my dad was reading in their bedroom, and slammed the door.”
    Wow. I couldn’t imagine Mrs. Lewis slamming anything. “You listened,” I state.
    â€œOf course I listened. Mom told Dad, ‘Jil’s mother called again.’ She said it as if she’d called before. And her voice was all quivery, like she was about to cry.”
    No kidding, I think, imagining what a colossal surprise all this would be to Mrs. Lewis. Mr. Lewis. And to Jil. I stare at the messy pile of papers I’d dumped on the floor and try to imagine how upset all of them must be. I also think about how every one of these old newspapers should have been thrown away a week ago.
    â€œThen they said a bunch of legal stuff that I didn’t totally get,” Jil continues. “But here’s the deal. I know I have something called an independent adoption. Mom and Dad told me that a million years ago. It means they actually met my mom. Briefly. She was a friend of our next-door neighbor’s cousin’s girlfriend, or something like that. They arranged my adoption through a lawyer, not an agency, because agencies take forever and they wanted a baby so much. Right away.”
    â€œThey know your mother?” I look up, stunned.
    â€œYeah,” says Jil, her eyes locked onto mine. “They even send her pictures of me, at least once a year, with a letter telling her stuff I’m doing, like tying my shoes or learning to ride a bike. But—no contact.”
    â€œNo contact,” I echo. “I always thought, with adoptions, nobody knew anybody, forever.”
    â€œMost adoptions,” says Jil. “Nobody knows anybody. Forever. Or, sometimes, until you’re at